Economic Value of SED Technology and TCO of Seagate Secure Drives

Economic value and cost of ownership are two very important factors that need to be carefully considered when evaluating how to safeguard an organization’s stored data. As the volume of data continues to grow exponentially, the risk of a costly data breach increases with it, and organizations should not wait until such a breach occurs before committing to a solution.

A recent Ponemon Institute study revealed the expected economic value of a full-disk encryption solution exceeds its cost by a factor ranging from 4 to 20, based on a reduction in the probability that data will be compromised as the result of the loss or theft of a digital device. And when you consider that most businesses have been encrypting data they send over public networks for many years, it seems misguided for them to leave the same data unprotected in their endpoint and corporate systems that are inevitably retired with every upgrade cycle.

In a follow-up study, Ponemon compared the total cost of ownership of software versus hardware-based full disk encryption solutions. They concluded that the TCO for the hardware encryption solution was as low as 9% the cost of a software encryption equivalent, based primarily on the cost difference of labor for both technical administrators and end users in managing daily encryption tasks.1

The economic analysis presented through Ponemon Institute and other analyst research demonstrates why organizations of all sizes across many industries are adding encryption of data at rest to their stable of data protection offerings to reduce the chances of them becoming the next data breach headline.